reclaim your voice.
My German and Chinese parents have always found it important for me to be culturally aware and open-minded. As a result, I am one of those lucky third-culture kids who got to spend the entirety of their primary and secondary education in bilingual and international schools. It is a fair assumption that exposure to different…
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What they’ll say: “What’s your opinion on Palestine?” “You don’t look very Jewish.” “You look too Jewish.” “Did you know that other gentile people died in the Holocaust, too?” What they mean: “Are you a Good Jew or a Bad Jew?” (There’s no right answer) “You would survive the Shoah.” “You wouldn’t.” “Your people need…
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I’ve written short stories for as long as I can remember. If I re-read them now they go from being painfully hormonal, hyper-emotional to more nuanced, better crafted, with less telling and more showing. For a year or so now, I feel this is somewhat close to what fiction is meant to be — the…
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On May 17, 1954, the Supreme Court of the United States of America gave its decision on the landmark case, Brown v. Board of Education, deeming racial segregation of schools unconstitutional. After its 9-0 ruling, the Court stated that: “separate educational facilities are inherently unequal” and that it violated the Equal Protection Clause of the…
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Learning a second language has always been my biggest lifelong dream. I remember when I was a child, my Argentinian grandparents would brew piping hot maté tea in the mornings and play alphabet games with me in Spanish. I remember hearing them smoothly transition from one native tongue to the other in conversation, entrancing my…
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These thoughts have always been tumbling through my brain perilously. I have vague memories of those first moments, when some alien crevice erupted with thoughts and feelings I couldn’t understand. I had cracked open something that let loose a glimpse into my core. I thought I had drowned these thoughts, but they bubbled up, and…
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That night, there was a special electricity in the air. I felt the push of bony shoulders, similar to a crowded concert. In spite of such a packed house, there was a low murmur of anticipation as we waited for the final results to come in, ward by ward, one by one. While we gathered,…
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Monsoons seize the trees of palm Clouds stand not alone behind the red curtain sun I swim with the black widowed crows Across the farm, a house rests on generational bones The familiar taste of sandalwood Burns in my throat and I think, I am home They ask, did you miss home? Two-eyed fish, banana…
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I find our tribal human mind will always fight against the heart, missing the soul of the matter at hand. Unless the steady mentor’s brush meets the tree’s gold-infused sap, patiently stroking our scars to rejoin us we remain broken, shards of ceramic tea pots, waitingto pair our bitter matchawith their coupled sweet. __ This…
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